Rise of the Soul Eaters
by The Rainbow Alicorn
Summary: An original World of Warcraft fan-fiction.
1. Prologue

Normally the tauren and night elves had respect for each other, great respect. Legend had it that they were the first races to awaken in this world, and both were peaceful, nature loving species. Times have changed though. With the wars, and the continued friction between the Horde and the Alliance, tauren and night elf both have found themselves pitted against world... and each other.

The combatants broke apart and backed away, panting, eying each other, trying to calculate what their next moves might be by judging the shifting of their weight and where they put their feet and how they held their weapons. Both were bleeding from small wounds they had managed to inflict. Both were exhausted by their prolonged efforts to come away from the encounter alive.

Bron raised his sword and charged again, the light of battle gleaming in his blood shot eyes. The night elf leaped aside, perhaps less nimbly than he would have at the start of the fight. He barely got himself out of the way of the blade as it stabbed at him, and Bron stumbled when his right hoof caught on an uplifted root. He staggered forward, slow to regain his balance, and hit a tree head on, embedding a horn deeply in the soft bark, effectively immobilizing him.

The night elf saw his chance, and leaped to drive his sword into the tauren's unprotected back. Desperately, Bron thrashed his body, and the horn suddenly cracked and splintered near it's base, freeing him, but at great cost. Roaring with pain and blood lust, Bron batted aside the blade with his bare arm, heedless of the deep slice it inflicted, and kicked out. His cloven hoof connected savagely with his opponents ribcage with a sickening crunch, sending him flying over the turf to sprawl in the thorny undergrowth, weaponless and groaning in agony as he struggled for breath.

Bron's broken horn was spouting blood down his face and neck in a hot stream, and the injury burned and throbbed maddeningly, like something was drilling into his skull. He staggered to the lake shore, unable to see or focus on anything for the moment, threw his sword to the ground and knelt as he slapped handfuls of silty bank mud onto the bleeding stump, trying to staunch the flow. The mud was cold and thick, which helped to slow the bleeding, but the pain didn't diminish much.

He heard a rustle behind him, and spun around, reminded of his dire situation while snatching up his weapon, but there was no blade plunging at him, just his opponent crawling free of the brush. Bron watched as the night elf dragged himself laboriously to open ground, and collapsed. He lay there for a while, before making the effort to roll onto his back. He wasn't armed either; his sword had been thrown clear when Bron had batted it away, and he made no effort to go to where it lay.

All the fight suddenly went out of him then, leaving him feeling weak and sick. His limbs weighed like lead. He stood there swaying and, finally finding the will to lift his hooves, plodded heavily to the night elf's side. He sat down with a grunt, and slumped.

Blood was frothing on the night elf's lips, bubbling as he breathed. That final kick had been the mortal blow. The elf's eyes glowed dimly as he gazed at the victor of their battle.

"You're not going to finish the job?" he asked weakly in the tauren's native tongue.

"No. I haven't the heart anymore," Bron said honestly.

They were quiet for a while.

"What has become of us?" the elf asked. "Our people are peace lovers."

"We fell to the corruption of war, and our differences," Bron rumbled. He watched the blood still welling into the hair of his coat from the slice on his arm. "We allowed others to pollute our views of the world."

"I have something for you."

Bron looked up. "What?"

The night elf reached to his throat, underneath the collar of his tunic, and undid a braided silk cord, from which dangled a round gold medallion punched through with a square hole. He held it up in a trembling hand for the bull to see.

"You are a great fighter," he said hoarsely. "You are powerful, and your heart is in the right place."

He coughed and spat more blood.

"I am not much longer for this world, so you... I want you to carry this on. This represents everything to us. Take it." He shook it at Bron, who took it gingerly and held it in the palm of his hand.

"What do I do with it?" Bron asked, bewildered. It didn't appear to be special in anyway. It was marked with script on one side and a dragon on the other, and though strung on a fine silk cord was itself a bit tarnished.

"Take it to a woman," the elf said, making an effort to enunciate even as his strength failed him. "Her name... I think her name is Argo." He considered. "Argo Mistrunner. In the capitol of Mulgore. Thunder Bluff. She-" he cleared his throat. "-she will explain everything to you."

Bron rubbed the medallion between thumb and fingers, and at least he spoke again.

"What is your name?"

The elf looked at him. "Dalanar Silverleaf."

"I am Bron Stonehoof," he said solemnly. "I will go to Thunder Bluff, and meet this person. But first, I'll shall sit with you a while."

"That... that is... thank you."

It wasn't long before the night elf succumbed to his injuries, each breath coming slower and more raggedly until finally, they didn't come at all.

Before he died, though, he gripped Bron's hand with weakening fingers and said one last thing.

"Live long, Bron...Brokenhorn."

Bron stared numbly at the dead elf, limp, the glow gone from his eyes. The tauren closed his lids with a careful touch.

"Walk with the Earthmother, Dalanar Silverleaf."

Bron didn't know or particularly care how long he sat with the dead man, but at last he stirred himself. In pain, bone weary, he stretched the body of Dalanar out on his own cloak. He placed his sword in the man's hands in the traditional warriors funerary pose, and then tied the cloak carefully into a bundle.

He did not have the strength to chop the wood to build a pyre in the manner of his own people, so he scraped out a shallow grave, between the roots of a tree, where he laid Dalanar to rest. It took him a long time to find enough stones to pile on top, but once he did, he drew his knife and carved into the trunk of the tree a simple symbol: a tall, straight tree, holding the world in it's limbs.

"Call me Bron Brokenhorn," he announced as he finished the carving. "And I will remember, my friend, the lesson you have taught me."

He gazed upon the sad grave, and then walked away. He swore on that day that he would not raise a hand to another again, unless in the most dire of circumstances... of which there would be plenty to come.


	2. Chapter 1

_She was sitting on a patch of dirt, outside their family tent, humming her favorite rhyming song, and scratching patterns in the sandy soil. She had a stick, which her father had whittled a point to, so that she could pretend it was a spear and that she was a mighty hunter. She had played at the game all afternoon with her cousin and brother, under the watchful eyes of their elders, and they had pretended to hunt great beasts, real and mythical alike._

_Eventually they had gotten bored, as all little ones do, and they each wandered off to find their own entertainment, and so now she was a great explorer making a map of all the things she knew. Her little pink tongue stuck out as she used her "spear" to scratch marks that represented all the tents in the camp._

_She eyed her work, and put in little trees, dotting them around the picture. And the path too! Couldn't forget the path, because that was where all the treats came from... it went by the camp, and then squiggled off into the unknown somewhere at the edge of her drawing. She added stick figures: her parents, the other elders and children of their little camp. Everybody was smiling. She liked smiling people. Happy was good. Good things came of happy._

_But then the map turned dark with ash and flame, and there was a hiss, and then a roar, and when she looked up from her drawing, it had all gone to blood and battle and screaming and death. Centaurs leaped the barriers with spears and bows and torches, and everything was on fire and splattered with red. One of the grandmothers snatched her up, and she dropped her stick, the stick that her father whittled for her, and she wanted it back as the woman ran, but she was very old and couldn't go fast._

_They tumbled and slid down the rocky slope, and the old woman gained her feet, but too slow! There were centaurs behind them! She was stuffed in a hollow log near the path, pushed way back into it's darkness with the dead leaves and wood dust, and the grandmother made her final stand. Arrows filled her like bone needles in her mothers pin box, but she was a shaman, and even as she died she made the earth quake like it was the end of the world, and the centaurs died, like all the rest of them-_

-Mab woke with a gasp, heart beating madly in her chest.

She sat up. Even as she did so, the feverish terror of the nightmare began to subside, but she knew those horrors far too well to shake them off completely. She wiped the perspiration off her nose with the edge of her blanket, then simply wrapped up and shook for a while. She attempted to reason with herself.

She was in her tent. She was high in status in this camp, so she had her own tent. This was not the Stonetalon Mountains. She hadn't been there in many years now. She lived as far away as she could get and still be in safe territory. Red Cloud Mesa. She closed her eyes, then opened them immediately. That way lay more horrors. Better to just stay awake, keep her eyes open until the adrenaline wore off.

She breathed deeply, carefully counting to 10 with each inhalation. It had been a long time since she'd had a nightmare that vivid, and she was deeply shaken. Time did not heal all wounds, she knew this, but still, she tried to keep her past exactly where it should belong: in the past.

She finally decided that trembling on her sleeping mat was not helping, so she tossed the blanket, dressed in her simplest clothing, and poked her head from the tent. It must have been near midnight. The camp was in deep shadow, but beyond she could see the grasslands of the mesa bathed in silver moonlight. She could just see the watch tower fire way up above the camp, and the dim glow of the embers that remained in the fire pit from the evening meal. There were no clouds above them. Every star that could be seen was twinkling in the black blanket of the sky.

She walked to the edge of the grassland, and seated herself on a rounded boulder in the moonlight. She often came here to sit and think or, even more often, to clear her mind with nature. Mab sighed, and drew her knees up underneath her chin.

She was the village shaman, the highest ranking one on the whole mesa, they often asserted to her, but she was too humble to let that go to her head. She trained youngsters who thought they might like to be shaman, but she made a point to encourage the healing arts over those for battle. Part of her objected to that, and wanted to show them what a true shaman was, the dual force on the battlefield... but another part would always remind her, that they were no longer at war. This was the longest stretch of peace the world had known in years, and she wanted to keep it like that, if only because she had seen plenty of it already.

She didn't know how long she sat there, gazing at the sky. There was a shower of falling stars above, and she hoped they were a good omen for things to come. She could hear the subtle rush of sound as the wind whispered through the grass, and the trilling of the night insects. She inhaled deeply, and took in the sweet scents of the meadow flowers, the tang of the earth, even the smell of her leather tunic.

She was interrupted in her musings by the sounds of hurried hoof beats.

"Mabuse!"

She turned to look at who hailed her. It was one of her students, the best among them so far, with the very finest touch in the healing arts. She fetched up against Mab's boulder, breathing hard.

"What is it, child?"

"The chief!" she said, and then hesitated. "I... I don't think... I think his time has come. He wants you."

Mab immediately understood, and got up to head back to camp.

"Then go I shall."


	3. Chapter 2

Old Bron Brokenhorn was dying.

It was an hour before dawn, if she had reckoned her time right. Mab squatted on her hocks nearby, maintaining her small selection of totems, but there was little she could do for her patient. Old Bron was just that: old. No one in the village knew how many years the big bull had lived, aside from his brother, Hamuul Stonehoof... and he had already passed on into the arms of the Earthmother, in the darkest days of last winter, much to everyone's grief. There were whispers, rumors, that Hamuul and his brother Bron were one of the few Tauren to have reached that legendary age status, well over 150 years old... which was ridiculous of course. Nothing grew to be that old, except the night elves, which were known to live thousands of years. They hardly counted though, considering how they played with immortality and other such magicks.

The former tribal chief was no longer the picture of health and vitality Mab's elders had told long and epic tales about while sitting around the winter fires. He lay unmoving on his sleeping mat, scarred fingers unconsciously clutching the woolen blanket, his dull black hide stretched over hardly more than bones now, muscles wasted, eyes sunken in his skull, his breaths wheezing and hoarse. His muzzle was silvered, and his beard and mane completely white. The young shaman wondered idly if she'd see even a fraction of his seasons. She didn't think she'd mind growing old, but like many who were young and in their prime, the thought of aging made her uneasy. Age was not something you could heal away, no matter how powerful you were.

A totem started guttering out, it's light flickering and fading rapidly. She turned and breathed life back into it, whispering a short incantation for it's revival. She wanted that one in particular: it kept the air purified, eliminated potential poisons and, if used in combat, created a sedative-like effect, useful to slow and befuddle the enemy. She had learned that the sedative was just as useful to promote restful sleep. It glowed faintly silver as it bloomed back into being, humming peacefully where it stood by the chief's head. She checked the others. One glowed a soft green at his side, providing strength and, perhaps naively, or with false hope, healing. The other totem glowed red, pulsing steadily. It was for the pain, as his old body failed him.

She glanced at the sky outside the tent shelter. It was beginning to lighten noticeably now. A new day was not far away.

When she turned her gaze back to Bron, she was startled to see his eyes open, staring intently at her. Like many elders of her kind, his eyes were still dark and clear despite his great age, dark brown and serious. His gnarled fist suddenly seized the front of her tunic, and pulled her close. She was so surprised by the abrupt action she nearly tumbled over onto her nose, which would have been terribly undignified and embarrassing. There was clearly a touch of fire in the old man's spirit still, and she watched, wide eyed, as he drew an object from the amulet pouch that hung from around his neck, a large gold coin on what looked like the remains of some string, and pressed it firmly into her hand. He raised his head with great effort, and heaved in a ragged breath to speak.

"You will take this to Thunder Bluff," he rumbled hoarsely. "You, and only you, will put this into the hand of Argo Mistrunner."

"Argo Mistrunner... " she murmured. "Who is-"

"Take it," he commanded, shaking her slightly. "Do not ask questions. Do not lose it, and give it to no one. Tell no one you have it. When I-" He gasped sharply, but Mab was riveted and didn't interrupt as he struggled to catch his breath. "-When I breathe my last, you must leave the camp immediately. This-" Another awful gasp, and the hint of a rattle in his breath. "-this is the key."

He abruptly released her, collapsed back onto the cushions, and shut his eyes. The rattle in his lungs which had begun to make itself noticeable did not retreat. He didn't have long now.

Mab sat numbly, staring. Old Bron showed no signs of stirring again, but did at least continue to breathe. There was no need to call the other shaman yet for his funeral rites. She gazed at the coin in her hand. It seemed unnaturally warm as she turned it over in her fingers, almost vibrating with heat. She could sense something magic about it, but it was no magic she had ever known. Upon close examination, it proved to be less a coin and more of a medallion; it was far larger than the gold used for currency in her world, marked in unfamiliar script around the edge of one side. A square hole was punched through the center. The other side had a snake or dragon, circling the hole.

_Thunder Bluff?_ She thought. That's a four day journey on foot at best, with all the dangers of the road that were trying for even fierce and well prepared travelers. It was maybe a couple days kodo ride, but her tribe was small and those kodo that were used for mounts were old beasts that were deeply attached to their riders, and would not part from them. She would be on the hoof the whole way.

_This is key,_ he'd said. No,_ this is THE key_. What a strange thing to say; it didn't look as if it'd open anything (even though she knew that logic was silly). Still, the request seemed simple enough, despite the obvious dangers. The task of trying to find this Argo Mistrunner in the huge camp that was Thunder Bluff was a little more daunting, however. She had never heard of this person, and knew not her profession or even what section of the camp she resided. It sounded like a Tauren name at least, so she was confident she was looking for one of her own kind. Not much of a reassurance though.

_Fret about that when you're there,_ she admonished herself. She tucked the strange object into her belt pouch, and settled back to watching her patient, but she remained uneasy and restless, troubled by his words and the demand for secrecy. Mab shook her head heavily, and tried to clear her thoughts. She straightened the blankets, checked her totems, and put water on to heat for tea, and she waited.

With the first touches of light on the land, old Bron Brokenhorn's tired soul fled with the darkness.


End file.
